Dragon Wing by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman (unabridged audiobook): It took me an incredibly long time to get through this book. It starts with some bits about Hugh the Hand, an assassin saved from execution with an assignment to kill the young prince. Then there’s some stuff about revolutionary dwarves, who find a guy and his dog, recently escaped from the Labyrinth. And somehow elves are involved, and an evil wizard, and possibly some people more powerful than the evil wizard. The stories eventually intertwine, but I had difficulty figuring out what happened to whom. Reading the wikipedia summary confirmed that I hadn’t actually missed anything plotwise, but I think the main problem was that there were a lot of races and I had trouble keeping track of their individual politics and histories. The fact that several of them call each other by differing names (Dwarves vs. Gegs, for example) didn’t help either. The only reason I pushed my way through to the end is because I was told that this first book is by far the worst in the series, and once you’ve gotten past it (and the requisite backstory), the rest of the series is excellent. Let’s hope so.
A note on the audio: I listened to this on MP3, gotten from a friend, who dubbed it off audio cassettes, which were copies themselves, so I have no idea who the narrator is. Which is a shame, because he’s actually pretty good.
Also posted on BookCrossing.